In each art the difficulty of the form is a substitution for the difficulty of direct apprehension and expression of the object. The first difficulty may be more or less overcome, but the second is insuperable; thus every poem begins, or ought to, by a disorderly retreat to defensible positions. Or, rather, by a perception of the hopelessness of direct combat, and a resort to the warfare of spells, effigies, and prophecies. The relation between the artist and reality is an oblique one, and indeed there is no good art which is not consciously oblique. If you respect the reality of the world, you know that you can approach that reality only by indirect means.


As quoted by John Gery in Ways of Nothingness: Nuclear Annihilation and Contemporary American Poetry (1996)

Richard Wilbur Quotes

In each art the difficulty of the form is a substitution for the difficulty of direct apprehension and expression of the object. The first difficulty ...

In each art the difficulty of the form is a substitution for the difficulty of direct apprehension and expression of the object. The first difficulty ...

In each art the difficulty of the form is a substitution for the difficulty of direct apprehension and expression of the object. The first difficulty ...

In each art the difficulty of the form is a substitution for the difficulty of direct apprehension and expression of the object. The first difficulty ...